Table of contents
- Prevent silver fish: what helps?
- Fight silver fish: the best home remedies
- Fight silver fish in the bedroom
- Fight silver fish: chemical and biological
- Where do silver fish come from?
- What do silver fish feed on?
- Fight silver fish: how many are normal?
- If nothing helps ...
Imagine you walk into the bathroom at night, switch on the light and see small insects scurry from the corner of the eye under the bathroom cabinet. A word: gross!
You really don't want to have silver fish in the apartment. Unfortunately, it cannot always be avoided because silver fish quickly get into the apartment through the smallest cracks. Therefore, we'll tell you the best tips, tricks and home remedies to combat silver fish.
Prevent silver fish: what helps?
When it comes to fighting silver fish, preventing is the best thing you can do. However, these measures also help when the insects are already in the apartment. So pay attention to the following preventive measures:
- Ventilate two to three times a day (produce snacks with widely open windows or pull through through cross ventilation).
- Do not dry the laundry with the windows closed.
- Leave the door open from internal baths.
- Leave the bedroom door open at night.
- Seal cracks and cracks in walls or tiles.
- Suck the joints and corners regularly.
Tipp:Did you know that plants can regulate the humidity?So not only look nice, but can also help against too high humidity.
Fight silver fish: the best home remedies
Once the silver fish have spread at home, a little more is necessary than mere ventilation. Only a few natural enemies have silver fish - and you don't want to have spiders in the house.
They also multiply extremely quickly. You can survive for several months without food and have a lifespan of up to eight years.
That explains why it is so difficult to get rid of them. So if you want to fight silver fish, you have to go to yourself and don't lose time.
Since silver fish get into the apartment through drains and are nocturnal, the simplest solution is:Close the drains at night.This can already keep part of the scaly insects away and should be the first measure.
Honey and baking powder
If you want to fight silver fish, drive well with a sweet. Distributed somethingHonigOn a piece of cardboard and use it as a trap. The animals stay sticking and you can simply dispose of the piece of cardboard.
Also effective, but radical: mixed sugar andbaking powderAnd spread it over a piece of paper or in the joints. The silver fish eat the powder mixture and then die. However, this is cruel death, because the baking powder swells strongly in its stomachs.
Fall from potatoes
Less cruel: builds a trap from a hollowed -out, cutPotatoin a bag. Silver fish love carbohydrates in a wide variety of forms. They gather around the potato, so that the next day you only have to close the bag and dispose of it.
Lavender
Another effective and pleasant way for us humans to combat silver fishLavender. Lavender acts like a residual retention on many insects because they hate the fragrance. Mix a few drops of essential lavender oil (Shop here at Amazon*) In the cleaning water, with which you wipe the floor.
Also effective: an aroma diffuser in which your ethereal lavender oil puts. The room air humidifier initially looks counterproductive, as long as it does not run in a closed room overnight, it exudes the lavender fragrance throughout the house. So the fragrance also penetrates into all cracks and columns.
lemon
Also effective:Lemon. Just like lavender, silver fish also hate lemon scent. Mix some water with lemon juice and spray the mixture onto the surfaces on which your vermin suspects. But be careful: citric acid can attack sensitive surfaces.
Important:You have to combine all the means you use for folding silver fish with preventive measures. When the rooms are damp and warm, the insects will come again and again. All home remedies only serve to combat symptoms. You also have to fix the cause in parallel by ensuring a good indoor climate.
Fight silver fish in the bedroom
It becomes particularly uncomfortable when silver fish spread in the bedroom. Some even make their nests in bed. Mites and skin scales serve as food there. In addition, we give up moisture in the air and the mattress by sweating at night, and the bed is also nice and warm-ideal conditions for a silver fish brood site.
In contrast to the bathroom, kitchen or basement, silver fish are not accidental into the bedroom. Either the infestation is due to the fact that it was not sufficiently ventilated or a construction problem.
In the bedroom, snipping should be ventilated several times a day. Particularly effective: create onePassageIn several rooms including the bedroom. The moist air is quickly transported from the room and dry, cool air gets into it.
It also helps when the room temperature in the bedroom is less than 20 degrees. But at least leave the room door open. This also lowers the room temperature a little and prevents the air humidity from increasing too much overnight.
Find and eliminate silver fish nest
The following applies to silver fishing: To get rid of them reliably, you have to find and remove your nest. But that is almost impossible because the crawling areas can hide so well. Often the silver fish are looking for scratch and corners in the bathroom or in the bedroom and lay their eggs there.
Wood cabinets with cracks, drawers or the bed frame are popular places for silver fish nests. In the event of a greater infestation, the cleaning of all surfaces and interiors of drawers and cupboards with detergent should take place. The bed linen should also be washed at 60 degrees.
Extra tip:Use a hair dryer and heat hard -to -reach places in your apartment. For example, the hookers go with the hair dryer. There can also be silver fish nests behind it.
Important:Even if you have successfully got rid of the silver fish, they will come back unless the cause of their infestation has been remedied. Therefore, regular ventilation is also very important as a preventive measure.
Fight silver fish: chemical and biological
If all home remedies do not help, the only way to remove silver fish remains. There are also a number of products without poison. One possibility is traps. There isAdhesive and bait traps.
Adhesive traps usually use glue that the insects like to eat. However, bait traps are nicer to look at. Usually these are bait boxes that contain an insecticide that is mixed with sugar and strength.
The bait box can simply be hidden under cupboards. Silver fish eat the insecticide and then retreat to their hiding place, where they finally die.
There is also the possibilityInsect spraysto use. However, many are chemical and can not only burden the environment, but also become dangerous for humans and animals. However, there is alsoLong -distance stop spraysthat are biodegradable and do not kill silver fish, but really only keep away.
Where do silver fish come from?
Silver fish need it warm. They stay in rooms with temperatures between 25 and 30 degrees. They also love a very high humidity. They are particularly common in the bathroom, but also the kitchen, laundry room and like to also basket can be affected by them.
In the summer months you can even spread throughout the apartment. Contrary to popular belief, however, silver fish can be found in the apartment all year round, because especially in winter, when it is cold outside, the insects are drawn into warm rooms.
There are silver fish in almost every household. They come in through sewage pipes. That is why rooms are usually affected with drains, such as the laundry room, kitchen, basement or the bathroom.
Most of the time we do not see the silver fish because they are nocturnal and shyly shy. So you have to catch them when you come home or go to the bathroom at night - and then switch on the light. As soon as you do this, they crawl in scratches, joints or behind baseboards and wallpaper.
What do silver fish feed on?
Silver fish eat hair, skin scales, paste, cotton, silk, paper, linen, dead insects, mold and mites. In this respect, they are even useful, because the feces of dust mites and molds can trigger allergies in humans. So silver fish are actually beneficials and do not have to be killed from a hygienic point of view.
Fight silver fish: how many are normal?
Silver fish actually do not do much damage and can be found in every household. They also do not transmit diseases. However, it becomes problematic when there are too many of the silvery insects in the apartment.
We not only find that disgusted, it also indicates an excessive humidity - and in the worst case that can mean a mold. You can also damage books and textiles.
The biggest problem is not the silver fish at all, but the humidity. If you lower the humidity, the silver fish also disappear. However, there are additional measures to combat silver fish if you are also bothered by isolated animals.
If nothing helps ...
If you have already tried everything to combat the silver fish, it can also be a construction problem. Ailing water pipes, poor insulation, loose wallpaper and also mold in the masonry attract the animals.
If one of these causes is given, you will always have to struggle with silver fishing. No matter how well you ventilate, clean or which means you use against the insects.
In the first step, only the help of one remains in the first stepKammerjägers. Depending on the infestation, the treatment can take several days and cost 50-150 euros. Afterwards, however, it should be searched for moisture damage in order to repair them and prevent the silver fish from coming back.
